UP charge sheets Durga Shakti, seeks reply in 15 days

Lucknow : The Uttar Pradesh government late Sunday served a charge sheet on IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal, who it had suspended on grounds of razing the wall of an under-construction mosque in a village in Noida, an official said.

Nagpal, a former sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) of Noida who came into the limelight for her campaign against the “sand mafia”, has been asked to submit an explanation of her conduct in 15 days.

In the charge sheet, the government has accused Nagpal of “jeopardizing” the communal harmony in the area, specially since the period is auspicious for both Hindus and Muslims owing to their ongoing holy months of Saawan and Ramadan.

The draft charge sheet, a senior government official told IANS, was vetted by the government at the “highest level” after receiving a draft copy from Meerut Divisional Commissioner Manjeet Singh. A copy of the charge sheet and a note has been sent to the union government as well.

“The suspended official has been served the charge sheet today (Sunday) and a copy dispatched to (the central government’s) department of personnel and training (DoPT) which had sought a report from the state government Saturday,” the official said.

The move of the Samajwadi Party (SP) government comes a day after Congress president Sonia Gandhi intervened in the matter and wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, asking him to ensure that “nothing unfair” was done to the official.

The SP had reacted sharply to her letter and had firmed up its earlier stand that whatever the government had done was correct.

Senior party leader Naresh Agarwal had asked Gandhi to write a letter to the Haryana chief minister, who is of her party, seeking corrective measures in the case of bureaucrat Ashok Khemka, who was transferred after he cancelled the mutation of the controversial Rs.58-crore land deal between Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra and realty giant DLF in Gurgaon district.

Nagpal’s suspension has led to a national outrage as she was believed to have taken on the illegal mining mafia, leading to her suspension.